Nature in Virtual Worlds

This article examines the challenges of translating Mavka: The Forest Song, a culturally rich Ukrainian animated film. It explores how translators must balance linguistic creativity, character integrity, and cultural specificity while ensuring accessibility for global audiences. As a children’s film, the English translation of Mavka plays a crucial role in fostering cross-cultural understanding. The study highlights instances where culturally embedded expressions were simplified or replaced, resulting in a more neutral text as well as a partial loss of its educational and cultural value. Additionally, it discusses how elements like colloquialisms, creative wordplay, and humor could have been better preserved. The paper critiques how the translation compromises the depth of the original by substituting culturally meaningful elements with more general expressions, particularly for young audiences who benefit from exposure to diverse traditions. Ultimately, it argues that while adaptation...

Digital ecologies are often shaped by the logic of the heroic arc described by Joseph Campbell, in which conflict drives the plot, a singular protagonist secures resolution, and worlds are remade through conquest. Such Campbellian narratives, common in video games and virtual reality (VR) environments, mirror cultural imaginaries where salvation arrives through domination. Against this, Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction offers a different orientation (stories of relation, multiplicity, and ongoingness). This article compares four digital ecologies, comprising three video games and one virtual reality game, two of which are structured through monomythic arcs of Campbellian thought and two that turn toward Le Guinian storytelling, to demonstrate how narrative choices shape ecological imagination. Drawing on María Puig de la Bellacasa’s understanding of care as “maintenance,” “repair,” and “situated knowledge,” the analysis reframes digital ecologies as sites for culti...

The rise of youth-led digital environmental movements necessitates a deeper understanding of the communication strategies that drive their influence. This study provides an analysis of how the Indonesian activist collective, Pandawara Group, builds its movement and influences public discourse through Instagram Reels. Employing a critical-social constructivist approach, this research conducts a qualitative content analysis of 137 Instagram Reels from 2024. It utilizes a dual theoretical framework, integrating media framing with the ecocultural identity framework to decode both the messaging tactics and the activist identity being performed. The findings reveal that Pandawara’s Project stems from the strategic performance of a dual identity: the empathetic “Moral Guardian,” built with “Morality/Ethics” frames, and the inclusive “Pragmatic Collaborator,” constructed with “Middle Way” frames. This dual identity is deployed through a cyclical narrative arc that adapts to the socio-political...

AbstractHidetaka Miyazaki’s Dark Souls trilogy are video games famed for their difficulty and the dark, medievalist esthetic of the world. These stories take place in ruined worlds, and the characters who inhabit them are also ruins in their undead states. These ruined states function as metaphors for depression within these games, which is a theme felt by many of the players who have anecdotal stories of how these games provided comfort, not in spite of their dark and ruined landscapes – but because of them. Keywords: Dark Souls, Dark Souls II, Dark Souls III, depression, medievalism, ruins, undead, allegory, video gamesWhen thinking of the Dark Souls trilogy, there are many vistas in the games that invite the player to gaze at during their doomed quest. The fallen magnificence of ruined cathedrals and castles, the infamous rot of the poison swamps, and the darkened, perilous corners of graves are all locations in these games. Most of them are marked out as gothic and gloomy, with sui...

Naredba je bila jasna: „Zabranjeno je kupanje u rijeci, čak i približavanje rijeci na udaljenost manju od dvjesto metara.” Dakle, nije moglo biti mjesta ni za kakav nesporazum. Tko god prekrši naredbu, ići će pred vojni sud.Pročitao im ju je neki dan s?m bojnik. Naredio je da se okupi čitava postrojba i pročitao im je. Naredba Divizije! S tim nije bilo šale.Prošla su oko tri tjedna otkako su se utaborili s ove strane rijeke. S druge strane bili su neprijatelji, oni Drugi kako ih je većina zvala.Tri tjedna nisu radili ništa. Bilo je nemoguće da takva situacija potraje, ali zasad vlada mir.Obje obale rijeke obrasle su šumom koja se protezala duboko u unutrašnjost. Gustom šumom. U toj su se šumi utaborili i jedni i drugi.Prema njihovu saznanju oni Drugi ondje su imali dvije postrojbe. No nisu pokušavali napasti; tko zna što su naumili. S obje strane rijeke u međuvremenu su postavljene stražarnice, sakrivene na više mjesta u šumi, spremne na sve.Tri tjedna! Kako su samo uspjela proći tri t...

Jednom je davno jedna vještica hodala šumom noseći dijete u pletenoj naprtnjači. Bilo je veliko i ružno, imalo kosu poput čekinja, zube oštre poput šila i kandžu na malom prstu, no vještica je, naravno, smatrala da na svijetu nema ljepšeg djeteta.Uskoro je stigla do mjesta gdje se šuma malo prorijedila. Onuda je prolazila cesta, klizava i neravna od korijenja, i njome su na konjima pristizali seljak i njegova žena.Čim ih je spazila, vještica se htjela odšuljati natrag u šumu da je ne vide, ali uto je shvatila da seljakova žena u naručju nosi dijete, pa se predomislila. Baš da vidim može li ljudsko dijete biti lijepo poput mog, pomislila je i zavukla se iza velikoga grma lješnjaka što je rastao uz rub ceste.No kad su projahali kraj nje, od žara se isuviše protegnula pa su konji ugledali njezinu veliku, crnu, vještičju glavu. Propevši se na stražnje noge, dali su se u trk. Iz sedla su zamalo zbacili i seljaka i ženu mu, koji su oboje prestravljeno kriknuli, nagnuli se naprijed ne bi li d...